Rehabilitation aimed at restoration of motor functions to semi-impaired upper extremities and lower extremities of patients suffering from strokes etc. and assessment of motor functions in the process of rehabilitation are generally performed labor intensively by physical therapists or occupational therapists (below, referred to together as “therapists”). Therefore, there are limits to increasing efficiency in rehabilitation and assessment of motor functions by therapists.
For example, in rehabilitation of an upper extremity, mainly repeated accurate movement of the impaired upper extremity over a range of movement slightly broader than the current movable range of the joint, passively or actively, is sought as much as possible. That is, the therapist teaches the patient the accurate movement and manually applies a passive load mainly to the impaired upper extremity of the patient or guides active movement of the patient and makes the patient perform repetitive movement in a suitable range of movement to thereby try to restore the motor function.
In such rehabilitation, due to fatigue of the therapist or the upper limit on rehabilitation time in medical insurance systems, the number of times of movements which can be repeated by a therapist for restoration of motor functions and the time which he or she can devote for assessment of motor functions are limited. Further, rehabilitation is performed one-on-one by a therapist and patient, so depending on the experience or skill of the therapist, there is a possibility of differences or variation in the medical quality of the rehabilitation, that is, the extent of restoration of motor function. Therefore, rehabilitation support apparatuses for assisting training by therapists and standardizing medical quality have been proposed (for example, PLT 1 and PLT 2).
Each of the rehabilitation support apparatuses described in PLT 1 and PLT 2, for example, has a robot arm to which a forearm part of a semi-impaired upper extremity of a patient is fastened and a drive and control part for driving and controlling the movement of the robot arm. The rehabilitation is performed by moving the upper extremity of the patient fastened to the robot arm in accordance with instructions of the therapist. The movement of the upper extremity of the patient is detected by a sensor attached to the robot arm. The drive and control part drives the robot arm so as to guide movement of the upper extremity based on a training program set in advance by the therapist or drives the robot arm so as to apply a load to the movement of the upper extremity or switches these drive methods in accordance with the time or number of training operations. The rehabilitation support apparatus can support training for rehabilitation by therapists by such operations. Such rehabilitation support apparatuses are mainly installed in hospitals and other medical facilities and are used for hospitalized patients and outpatients under the guidance of the therapists.